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How a small town in Peru reminded one traveler to enjoy the journey

Six months ago, the chilly and nondescript mountain village of Comas had no real meaning for us. We couldn’t find it on a map, nor had we any plans to be there during its old annual harvest festival. In any other context, we would have just driven past it, like we did through so many other small towns high up in the Andes.

Our trip began, like most trips do, full of the possibility of adventure and discovery. My husband and I had both been to Peru several times before, so we had an idea of where to stay, what foods we wanted to eat, and how we wanted to organize our days to get the most of our two-week visit. But because we’re journalists, this was no vacation.

We’d come to Peru with a grant to report three different stories that would take us around Lima and then on to Satipo, a coffee-producing town about 300 miles east of the capital, along a serpentine and at times unpaved road on the edge of Peru’s Amazon Basin.

Travel is what brought us together from the very beginning: Bear and I met 10 years ago during a trip to a little town south of the Texas border, called Piedras Negras. He was there to take pictures, I was working on a story. Before we knew it, we’d fallen in love, and we’ve been telling other peoples’ stories ever since.

When our daughter Camila arrived two years ago, we made a commitment to continue working together and traveling in pursuit of new experiences and stories, while bringing her along for the ride.

So far, work trips with her in tow to Oklahoma, Washington D.C., Thailand, Panama, and Ecuador have gone as smoothly as we could have hoped, despite the occasional jet lag, flight delays, missed naps, mosquitoes and humidity we’ve encountered along the way.

Until our two weeks in Peru.

The problems started on our second day there. A good friend had flown in to Lima to travel with us, and to help take care of Camila while we worked. In exchange for this, we agreed to pay all her expenses during the trip. Our first interview took us away for several hours that afternoon, so we left them at the apartment with toys, food and instructions for nap-time.

“Don’t worry about it!” our friend said, as we made our way out. “Go! We’ll do fine.”

On our ride back we got stuck in rush hour traffic. Our cab driver cursed the cars ahead of us, while the incessant Lima mist made the roads slick.

“Sesenta Soles, por favor,” — sixty Soles, please — he said when he reached our door. Sitting in the back seat, Bear pulled out a 100-Soles bill and handed it to him.

The driver grabbed it, looked it over, and quickly handed it back to us. “There’s something funny about this bill,” he said. So we handed him another.

Again, he sent it back, and for the third time, I gave him yet another, clueless about his intent.

Bear whispered something and gave me a knowing look, but I failed to read the signs. By the time he sped off, I realized we’d been swindled out of the equivalent of $100 in the most sophomoric way possible.

The bills he’d returned to us — not the ones we had originally given him, we now realized — looked ridiculously fake.

Back in the apartment, our friend looked overwhelmed and annoyed. Camila had barely napped and she needed a lot attention, she said.

“I didn’t realize 18-month-olds could be so much work!” And that was that. From that day on, we decided not to ask her for anymore support, and she wouldn’t offer any, either. So we started bringing Camila along to all our interviews, taking turns distracting her or carrying her in one arm while holding out a microphone or camera with the other.

After five days of working this way, we rented a car and headed east. The plan was to spend a few days with a group of young women; coffee farmers who’d chosen to stay in Satipo instead of migrating to the city in search of higher education or other work. Satipo was only six to eight hours away, we were told. Though we had been in touch before our arrival in Peru, all I had was a phone number for one of the coffee farmers we were planning to interview there. No address, no time for a meeting — just a number that would go straight to voicemail each time I dialed it from the road.

Cell phone service became increasingly spotty along the freeway that took us out of Lima and wound its way up and around pastures, then into the snow-capped Andes mountains and limestone mines. The overwhelming silence — our annoyance towards our friend who couldn’t be of help — was uncomfortable, to say the least, but the passing views filled the void and the passing hours. Six, seven, eight hours passed ... turns out Satipo was much farther than we thought.

Then, just as we as we started to descend from the higher altitude into a lush cloud forest, we saw the faint outline of a town emerge from the dense fog. We heard music, and we had to navigate around a large crowd gathered in the town’s small plaza. Eager to stretch our legs, we parked the car.

We’d ended up in Comas, a small quechua community in Junín Province. And lucky for us, on this day residents were celebrating their annual harvest festival — the surrounding valley is known for an incredible variety of potatoes — with traditional dancing, music, and food from this region.

Girls with long twin braids wore colorful dresses and balloons on their heads, and held wooden crosses covered in flowers as they moved alongside teenage boys. Hundreds of people sat on bleachers and on the balconies facing the plaza, put into a trance by the young dancers spinning like whirling dervishes.

Image: Bear Guerra

Vendors hawked fried pork, corn, and roasted potatoes to the onlookers. The girls were smitten with Camila, gifting her flowers, and asking to have their photographs taken with her.

We stuck around for over an hour — taking in the folkloric music, watching and being watched by the locals — even as raindrops started to fall and the temperature started to drop.

That precious and unexpected find along the road melted the tension in our car; encouraged us all to keep going on to Satipo even though we had a feeling the story we were hoping to find wasn’t going to pan out.

We drove another five hours, well into the night.

After a day and a half in Satipo’s lushness, we headed back to Lima.

Image: Bear Guerra

Looking back, I’d like to think our time in Peru happened so we could be reminded of why we do what we do, and why we won’t settle for a more comfortable and sedentary life. If we didn’t welcome the unexpected, and even the mishaps that come along with it, why should we keep traveling?

Camila may be too small to remember this trip when she’s a grown woman and goes on to explore the world on her own. But as long as we keep traveling off-the-beaten path as a family, we won’t forget those two weeks in Peru.

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